A lot of leaders? Robert Parris Moses, SNCC, and leadership in the production of social change during the American Civil Rights Movement, 1960-1965

Abstract

This is the definitive biography of one of the most influential, yet relatively unstudied, leaders of the civil rights movement: SNCC-worker Robert Parris Moses. Uniquely written with his rare personal cooperation and based on new primary source material, it fills the gap in historical knowledge concerning his activities, leadership, and legacy. In doing so, many myths are not only shattered about Moses__presenting him in an entirely new light__but also about the movement in general. Employing the case study of Moses__ daily activism between 1960 and 1965 and the organic and cosmopolitan influences that shaped his work, it goes beyond current academic interpretations of the movement and top-down and bottom-up leadership by illuminating the interaction between Moses and the grassroots movement in Mississippi. By doing so, new insight is obtained into the process, or the nuts and bolts, of how __facilitating ind igenous leadership__ worked in practice, as well as the role that SNCC__s singular organizational culture and Moses__ leadership style played in its impact. This clarifies how the interrelation between a leader and the self-negating organizing approach that SNCC embodied helps explain how social change was generated by the 1960s civil rights movement.